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how do you make a gif at gickr.com Monsters in the Parasol
The Field, She Said: A Flash-Fiction
Above the highway—where the rain would fall first, way above the trees and the high arching rocks and that waterfall that would freeze in midwinter—there was a steep incline, paved in crumbling granite, and if you could scramble up the jagged edges (as we did that muggy April night, the remnants of our ascent tumbling down to the road) you could grasp onto the sharp lip at the peak and heave yourself up, onto this vast concrete field, stretching for what seemed like forever into the night time. That’s where we found ourselves that night, the sounds of the city and the freeway and the loose rocks disappearing into the blackness that surrounded us.
We laughed at the dark and fell onto each other, and onto the cool, damp concrete, our breathing heavy and echoing off of the skyline, returning to us in undulating waves. Finally we grew accustomed to the silence, and we shut our eyes, listening to the sound of nothing, which was actually quite noisy. We heard the cars, faint below us. We heard crickets down in the trees. We heard our own rasping breath exiting our lungs. We heard our heartbeats and our muscles creak when we moved.
I held your hand through the uproar, and you turned to me after what seemed like an eternity, and even though I kept my eyes on the stars I felt yours burning two perfect little nickel sized holes through my skull. “Do you think,” you finally said, your voice barely even a whisper, barely audible against the silent din of the man made plateau, “Do you think this will last?”
I was quiet for a moment before I answered. “This place? This world? This universe? Or us?” I turned to look at her, her brown eyes gazing out at me behind a long curtain of eyelashes, her high cheekbones, ridged features, all framed by the intricate waves of her hair. Her nose-ring winked at me in the pale moonlight. “All of it,” she whispered, her voice smooth, exhaled.
I held her hand just a bit tighter and turned to look back to the stars. “See that right there,” I pointed with my free hand, “that little reddish star right over there?” She nodded at me. “I have absolutely no idea what that is. I couldn’t tell you. It could be a planet or a star or a spaceship or anything out there. The point is that I have no way of knowing. Sure, I could go and look up what it is, but it would ruin the mystery. I can tell you only one thing about that little red whatever-it-is up there: it will be there for a very long time. So will all of those little blinking lights. The moon. All the planets. They don’t hop from solar system, to solar system trying to find some more perfect home.”
She frowned at me then, I felt it even before I turned to look at her. I sat up, and gestured out to the surrounding concrete field. “Look at all of this! We’re sitting here, in the most beautiful place we know and it’s just an empty expanse of concrete, a reminder of something someone at some point tried to build but never finished. We’re in love in a place where someone failed. So did they ultimately fail?”
“What’s the point you’re trying to make here?” Her voice was filled with concern, and it made me nervous. I laid back down, my head resting on her stomach, her belt digging into the back of my neck. “I don’t really know,” I sighed, “I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are certain constants that exist in our universe. And yeah, everything eventually goes away, but what’s to say that they really do? Isn’t everything a matter of perception anyways? In our lifetime we’ll probably never see one of those stars blink out of existence. It’s just not probable. So who’s saying that they ever will? If we die before it happens than our perceptions stop at that moment, so our realities cease to change. We preserve them when we die.”
“Are you ever gonna answer my question?” She’s smiling now, her hands running through my hair. I smile back at her, and sit up again, more excited now. “I don’t really know anything, but I do know that no, none of it will last: the universe will eventually end and everything will be sucked into some sort of black hole or wormhole or something else like that. But I’ll die by your side, and this universe won’t have changed a bit. Our reality is one that can’t go away. I’m like those stars up there. I’m not going to go hopping from one place to another searching for something more beautiful. This field, this is perfect. It has its flaws but its perfect. And you, you’re perfect. You have your flaws but you’re perfect. You always will be. And I’ll always shine for you. Even if you can’t explain it. So to answer your question, yes and no. But yes.”
I fell back down onto the concrete, and she put her hand in mine. “It is a beautiful place isn’t it. It’s ugly, but beautiful,” She silently spoke to the nighttime. I gazed out at the sky, and at the empty gravel field around us. “Yeah,” I responded, “yeah it is in a way.” I turned to look at her, expecting her eyes to be trained on our surroundings, but instead she was gazing out behind us, her head crooked backwards, and her stare dropped down the incline, through the thick trees, across the freeway, and faded into the lights of the suburbs and the distant city, where it swirled in with the neon and fluorescent lights and vanished, lost on the horizon.
(Source: lesprisenpati)
Why I Write So Many Love Songs (Please reblog this, I want people to know!)
Someone recently asked me why I write so many love songs. Well, here’s my answer to you, and to everyone:
The love songs from my childhood got it all wrong. Mislead me to believe that love is something pure, one hundred percent angelic, all white linens and red lipstick and endless adoration. And how could I argue? It’s so hard to fight those fucking sentimental, jaded lyrics when Frank Sinatra is crooning them into your ear, late at night with the heat coming in vast waves through your open window, the moon bright enough to fill your room with pale blue light, glimmering off the hardwood floors.
I spent so damn long looking for that feeling, those songs, and I wasted so much time doing so, I can make a list of past issues overlooked. My Preoccupation with this quest to find an unattainable emotion led me to the very bottom of everything. And I finally gave up. Threw out my Sinatra CDs, my Dean Martin vinyl and relinquished myself to the universe. I stopped trying, and right at that moment, right as I gave up this life-long journey to find “love” as I believed it to be, I found something better.
I found her.
And I saw that the songs were all wrong. Love will never be clear-cut, or starry-eyed idealism. Love can’t be defined through synecdoche—it doesn’t become clear when viewed through only one of its lenses. It can’t be explained by one of its parts. Love isn’t denotation.
The songs were wrong because love is every moment spent in love, the good and the bad: the dances at midnight beneath the stars and the overdoses, the hours spent beneath too many blankets and the 5 AM panicked phone calls, slurred speech of reassurance and a sick girl passing out on new years, breakfast in the mornings and tense anger—only to be flattened by unerring passion. Love is sex and blood and sweat and tears and everything collated into one tiny word. Ultimately, love is a trillion particles of matter, all amassing their miniscule, fractional, insignificant selves to form something so overwhelming, so beautiful and terrifying, that no one will ever have any hope of comprehending it.
So why do I write so many love songs? Because each one is a moment. I’m slowly, ever so slowly, painting a broader picture. This is my life’s work. This is my purpose here, with her, on this earth, in this vast, incomprehensible universe. And I will never be done. Because love is—ultimately—infinite. I’ll die, and she’ll die, but the love we have for each other? That will always carry on and on and on, until the very fabric of time unravels beneath it. As long as these songs have been made, have been played, have been created, then that love will still exist, long after we’re gone, long after our bones have turned to dust, long after our bodies have returned to the dirt, long after our souls have drifted onwards, as one.
(Source: lesprisenpati)
I’m so washed. My body has never been this sore. Ever. I haven’t even done that much physical exercise. My brain is just working overtime and I’m rolling along and everything is blurry and I can’t get past any of the people walking slowly. I’m just going to lay down and watch TV until my eyes bleed and I become a zombie.
So this is a bit of a weird song from the ever disturbing dark corners of my head. It’s called “Oriental Rug” and yes, it’s based on that poem I posted a while back. It’s partly spoken word…idk dude. I just hope you guys like it :) Let me know.
(Source: lesprisenpati)
Oceanview-Lakeview (Vignette on Florida)
There’s an overwhelming smell of chlorine sputtering over the gate, drowning the sweet passion of the ocean with its caustic disarray. It’s a pressure on the back of the tongue and a headache bursting out from behind shaded eyes. Cinderbrick is grey and uniform, splaying itself up to the clear, hot sky. There’s a haze near the peak, and the air makes waves beneath the sun. Door is screen and broken glass—rough against tanned leather and the spackle crumbles across small hands in the door-frame. Inside the clerk is large—sits behind her desk as a mythic monstrosity, and her back sticks to her shirt and her shirt sticks to the flypaper hanging from the wall and the wall sticks to the nothing behind it. The stairs are right past the mailboxes, up through six flights, down the hall and suddenly at the door, 606 in tiny polished letters. The carpet is dim and grey and stained in spots where the Hispanic lady with the steam cleaner missed it last week (Above she’s got the vacuum running that she carries strapped to her waist like a magnum). That nice lady with the calico she holds when she cooks walks down the hall, her dark skin riddled with acne scars and beads of sweat. Her voice lilts in and out of creole, “Ki jan pou Cherie, ti kras mwen Jodi a? You been good today?” Hands lighter in the palm hold out a plate, freckled with gaudy purple flowers. Underneath a sheet of saran wrap there’s two friend plantains, their heat fogging up the clear plastic. With a nod she turns on her heel and says goodbye, her step lumbering and eloquent all at once. Plate held from the bottom burns, and the purple flowers scatter across the hall in a trillion little pieces. The steam escapes the saran wrap and soars up, stopping only to catch a thermal in the humid air before being sucked away into the vent, starving six feet off the ground.
(Source: lesprisenpati)
The Printshop (Short story I wrote for my manuscript. It links my whole book of poetry together)
His hands were stained with monochromatic dreams. Ink between the nail and the soft fleshy parts and the lines the palm reader would gaze at wonderingly on occasion—endless it seemed at times. He would wash them until his hands were raw and the black medium would stay trapped right there in those little fissures and seams. The very tools he made his living with were a map, little black lines straying all over their meandering handscape. During lunch breaks at the shop he would sit outside his window—long spiderlike legs draped off the edge, toes pointed at the street far below—and ignore the clouds, instead watching the trails on his hands change depending on how he held his cigarette.
That’s where he was on Monday.
And Tuesday.
And Wednesday
And Friday (he had Thursday off.)
By the next Monday he had taken to watching the lines and the smoke while unfocusing his eyes and seeing the blurry people in the street below his feet run to their jobs. The steam engines had taken over by now, and the air around him was burnt. Zeppelins grazed the rooftops with surreal, whale-like grace; their anchor lines thin spiderwebs of far away silk. He was in essence, just like them. The zeppelins anyway…
When he pulled himself away from the scene of steam and blimps and clouds and from his own mysterious landscape he wandered across the print room, to the lobby. The elevator doors were open and the operator stood in all his midafternoon glory—uniform disheveled and wrinkled, the buttons popping listlessly off of his coat. He gave a weak smile as the doors closed. The lights turned from orange to green and the elevator jerked down…
He’s a goat I promise you. Chewing on the day’s paper.
Guns drawn and loaded and cocked and all that stupid shit
That people only say in movies.
On-lookers seemed shocked but who’s to blame here
I mean, when you have a goat operating an elevator
I suppose shooting it would be reasonable in some situations.
His hair is mangy and loose and his beard is tugging
At his bottom lip, his chin, cutting lines in his jaw.
Teeth crooked, broken, shifty eyes and thoughts too. I think.
Now he’s naked and no one is really sure why
But I guess we could go out on a limb here and say
It could be because goats only wear clothing when
They’re pretending to be human…
Outside he was a little safer. Less cramped. His hands were telling him where to go. Right there through the steam. No little to the left. FOLLOW THE LINES. You’ve got them right there, motherfucker, they’re written into your very existence. Forget your hands, you know them by now. Spent your life staring at them in wonder. Now do something. Do something. Every whisper was an echo and every yell was a diminished call. He pushed through crowds to the first stop on his map:
The window was blank as a slate as he gazed in; the first thoughts were astonishment. Fibers of cloth weaving into one another, forming…forming nothing really. A dress. It was ragged looking—frayed edges framing a shoddily woven body—but somehow shocking. It turned and looked at him and the dress fell away and now he saw the body within it, the astonishing brown hair, piercing green eyes, elegant nose, cheeks, languid neck and shoulder blades, breasts and ribs and stomach, curving away into mystery. She held her freeze frame for a few moments before walking over to the window. He backed away instinctively at first, until she held out a hand, beckoning him. Stepping up to the window nervously, he leaned on the frame. She spoke in calm, dark tones, her voice meandering and digressing to eternity.
You saw me and now, well, I guess that’s okay.
She kissed him gently on the lips. Hers were soft and hollow, his cracked and dry.
How’s that? I can’t offer much more right now. I’m in a rough place. I’ve shown all this to you and now I just don’t know if I can show you more. There’s no more to show. All my scars need to heal.
He hadn’t even noticed her scars. Some were recent. “I think they’re beautiful,” he said, “I think all of you is beautiful, even the flaws.” And he meant it.
You think the idea of me is beautiful. I’m not an idea, sweetheart. I’m a girl and I need to be seen like that. I know you say you love all of me now, but by the time we’re through an hour or so you’ll think otherwise. I promise you will.
He declined to respond, resigning to the typicality of it, kissing her on the cheek and walking on; through black streets and frameless houses, where fires burnt deep in their bellies. Their towering chimneys coughing up endless shadows of black smoke that blotted out the sun until it rained ash and the world was buried in former martyrs from the race of coal. The white ash fell and turned everything pale and useless.
There’s nothing stopping me from plowing into the rails
Nothing to stop me from pushing myself over the edge.
Sure there are precautions. There always are but right now
All I can see is that you, motherfucker, are a loser.
Your head is between your knees and you don’t know how to look up.
Look up! Look at the raining remnants of fires past
Look at the sun and the sky and the clouds and the dark
And look at the paradoxical moon, hanging with the early sun
And realize that you are everything you’ve made yourself.
You thought that you could follow routes on your hand?
Mapped out by the very things you’ve been doing your whole life?
You’re a moron if you ever believed that. Try to change
Look at the shit that isn’t here anymore. Look at the lack of Dexedrine
Look at the freedom, the ability to stare out at the zeppelins
The ability to walk away and never come back and change your name
Become someone who no one else has ever been but YOU.
Look at your hands.
The lines were gone. He stood in front of the printshop with his hands in front of his dumbfounded face, gazing curiously at them. They were clean. The lines were gone. The lines the fortuneteller so intently watched over the years. The map he’d been following had been erased. Where once stood the prinstshop now showed on his flesh…nothing. A small birthmark. A blip. With a final gesture he waved goodbye to the goat in the elevator, spun to the street and was swallowed by the choking, steam soaked crowd.
Above, a zeppelin detaches from its mooring line and floats up, up, up
All alone, losing sight of the vast metropolis.
It freezes as it reaches terminal altitude, and explodes.
It’s in a million pieces, raining across a hundred square miles.
But it’s free.
So it’s okay.
I promise the guy in the elevator is a goat.
(Sometimes you shouldn’t trust the narrator).
(Source: lesprisenpati)
I wrote this to sophie, but I feel like everyone should hear it.
Try to see that everything is beautiful. We live on a planet that somehow, through some cosmic, chaotic fate, is able to nurture life. LIFE! something that’s so miraculous and incredible and yet we take it for granted every day. But through time we’ve gone from single celled amoebas to complex microcosms. People. Living breathing thinking organisms. We are capable of love. There’s something beautifully crazy about that.
The reason why Marvel superheroes are better than DC is because in the DC universe most of the heroes (with a few exceptions) are these INSANELY superpowered dudes who only have one weakness (i.e. Superman and kryptonite, Green Lantern and Yellow, etc) but in the Marvel universe, the superheroes are misfits. Social outcasts, with a couple of powers. They can get the crap kicked out of them. They can be discriminated against. People hate them. They can succumb to mental diseases or normal diseases. They lose people. They fall in love. They fall out of love. They die. They’re real. They’re human. Iron Man is an alcoholic. Spiderman is torn between two girls, one of whom dies because he fails saving her. The mutants are treated like second class citizens and eventually are even hunted by the government. Etc etc etc. The point I’m trying to make is that they make mistakes. They aren’t gods. They’re humans who are imbued with incredible talents. Which makes them the perfect characters.
